When Ezril was seven, he’d once asked the gate keeper, Eln, what it took to become a great warrior. The head gate keeper’s words had been simple: “It is neither swords nor spears nor armors or shield. It is skill, and determination. Courage… and the great favor of Truth.”
Eln’s words had stayed with Ezril longer than he had expected it to, but not for the reasons many would believe. No. The reason was because while it was not the first time an adult had done their best to sound sage and wise in front of him, it was the first time he had heard doubt and hesitation in an adult’s voice when speaking of Truth.
As children, the catechism always taught that Truth was the greatest, the one true god standing above all else. His existence was paramount and without question. He led men to victory and gave the kingdom of Alduin the gift of the Hallowed. Without him, there would be no kingdom; no realm.
Without him, there would be no protection from the sinister malevolence of the Tainted and their magic. There would be no Hallowed strong enough to stand against magic. Truth had given them this in the name of his priests.
So Eln’s words stayed with Ezril for years longer than it was intended to, not for ‘courage’ or ‘determination’ or ‘skill’ but because it was the first time he realized that adults existed who did not believe entirely that their existence was with the grace of Truth.
Eln was the first man to hesitate to give Truth credit.
As Ezril grew older, he understood better. However, while he understood the human confidence of wanting to claim glory for every victory achieved, he did not understand the courage and determination to deny Truth the glory he was due.
Now he was ten and sitting next to a gutter that smelled of age old detritus and something dead in the destitute parts of the city that was called the Underbelly. Judging by the stench of it, Ezril was more than certain human excrement was part of the contents of the gutter.
Already accustomed to the smell, he turned his attention from his sense of smell and returned it to the game in front of him.
Splayed out on the sandy ground was a game of netti. A set of pebbles arranged in no obvious pattern stared back at him, waiting and hoping. Around Ezril three boys laughed and bickered. Their entertainment created as much disturbance as it could. Each one was poorly dressed. One was dressed so poorly that he had no shirt with which to cover his torso.
The boys did not bicker and laugh for the sake of one entertainment or the other. Their entertainment and enjoyment played a part in it but not its entirety. Their true goal was in Ezril’s disturbance.
“Go on, then,” Alphons mocked, voice teasing. “Show us what Lenaria taught you before she left.”
Ezril ignored the boy as he tried to focus on his concentration. The game of netti was not popular on his side of city. Where Ezril lived, the children were more civilized, better dressed. They played more civilized games like the old game of war the scribes and scholars that played a part in guiding the kingdom and advising the king favored.
Here, in the back waters of the small city of Green Horn, one of the lands under the purview of the Baron of the Deep, they played netti. And they enjoyed it.
Ezril rolled the few pebbles in his small hand. He counted four in total, his usual limit. At four pebbles, his hand was full, comfortably so. Still, he knew he could fit a few more pebbles in it. But that wasn’t the problem. How many pebbles he could hold in his hand was only a small portion of the games difficulty. The greater portion was how many more he could add to their numbers.
Netti was a game that could be played alone or with multiple players. All that was required to play it was a significant number of pebbles and a player. Its aim was in how many pebbles could be gathered in the player’s one hand before one slipped and fell. The difficulty was in the fact that only one hand was allowed to be used in the game. Nothing else.
“You’s burning daylight,” Alphons frowned. “Lenaria played better than this. We’s thought you was her legacy.”
Ezril fought his frown at the continued mention of Lenaria and made his move. He tossed all four pebbles in his hand up. He did his best to calculate where each one went and how high they soared as his hand reached down into the sand. He snatched one of the tiny pebbles, quick and efficient. He fought a grimace as sand got under his nails.
The pebbles he’d tossed were falling now, each one falling in its own place. Lenaria was the only one who played the game this way. The other children played it safer. They kept their pebbles in their hand as they reached down to claim the ones in the sand. It was safe and efficient against Lenaria’s reckless technique. It was also slow.
Ezril’s eyes snapped to another pebble. One in hand, he had the time to garner another before he would be hard pressed to catch the ones that he’d tossed. So he took his chance and snatched at another pebble.
Fren, the smallest of the group, shirtless and happy, chose that moment to cough. It was the simplest sound, small, withheld, even. But it was enough to break Ezril’s focus. Ezril’s fingers grazed the second pebble but failed to snatch it. Where Fren’s cough had broken Ezril’s focus, missing the pebble had broken his confidence. Ezril found himself scrambling after his now falling pebbles.
His hand moved, quick as the wind. His left hand, free and exempt from the game, twitched in a barely restrained urge to aid him. He kept it there with nothing but his will, honed over three years of playing netti. He snatched the lowest falling pebble. He caught it a quick moment before it struck the sand and his hand climbed upwards. It snatched each pebble from the air.
Ezril reached for another falling pebble and closed around nothing, missing it. He tried not to let it bother him as his hand continued its upward trajectory. He allowed it snatch the next in line before pulling it down, sending it after its missed target. The hand shot down, three pebbles hidden within its embrace and reached for the missed pebble before it hit the ground.
His fingers sucked it into the comfort of his fist a moment before his play mates erupted in a chorus of satisfied cheers.
Ezril’s lips pressed in a thin line as the last pebble hit the ground. It was soundless in the cushion of sand. As much as he liked to think he had been close, he had not been. He knew his problem had begun from the moment he’d failed to snatch up the second pebble. In fact, he knew he shouldn’t have gone for daring accomplishments with five pebbles in the air, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. The chance had been right there. His success would’ve beat his own record, tied him with the second highest record in their small rag-tag group.
You were greedy, he told himself. Should’ve planned it better, waited it out.
Ezril let out a defeated sigh as he released the pebbles in his hand and sat down in the sand.
“Close,” Alphons commended. “But not close enough.”
Ezril looked at the boy with a satisfied smirk. Despite the loss of having failed to beat his own record, the game had still been fun.
“And how many are you at?” Ezril asked, smiling.
Alphons smirked. “Ten.”
Ezril’s smile slipped from his face. “Ten!”
He refused to believe Alphons had beaten Dorni’s record. But when? The last time they had played, Alphons was still holding the record of seven pebbles to Dorni’s nine pebbles. Alphons held the rank of second to Dorni’s first.
“When did you get to ten?” Ezril asked, still in shock.
“Two days ago?” Fren answered, his voice as small as his size.
Ezril turned to him. “Two days ago?” he asked, wondering where he’d been while Alphons was increasing the gap in their accomplishments. “Two days ago was Frostiff so…”
“So you were in church,” Dorni finished for him.
Dorni was the largest of the group even if not by a significant margin. He had the characteristic brown eyes of any Alduin. He had soft wiry hair and a crooked nose he’d gotten from a fight he’d been in at an age when Ezril still couldn’t leave the house alone. He’d broken his nose in the fight. Being from the back alleys with no one to care for him, he’d received no proper treatment. Without setting the nose right, it had healed poorly.
Still, it gave the boy a deadly look.
Ezril turned his attention to Dorni. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Dorni responded with a shrug.
“I got nothing against worshipping Truth,” he said, scattering the pebbles in the sand, distancing them from each other so that they were harder to reach but not too difficult as to be impossible. “But I don’t likes the church.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
There was only one church of Truth in the entire city so there was no mistaking which church he was talking about.
“Yeah,” Fren agreed. “Sisters there don’t let us in. An’ when we try to takes the food, they chase us away.”
“That’s cause you’s always looks like one of the Broken whenever we go,” Alphons joked. “With big eyes and tiny lips.”
“My eyes is not big,” Fren argued, narrowing his lids to reduce the size of his eyes.
“They are kinda big,” Ezril joked. “I mean, you could probably look up and see Truth from way down here.”
Alphons and Dorni laughed. The sound was unrestrained and buttressed the jibe.
Fren frowned but took the jokes in strides. He didn’t complain. He’d given worse than this on many occasions, after all.
Ezril had learned earlier on that it was the way with this group. When Lenaria had still been around, before she’d gone and found a good man to adopt her and take her from this city, she’d been a part of this. She joked as easily, exchanging banter with the rest of them. It was hard to use words that displeased her enough to cause a problem. And while there were times when she would get angry, times when she would stomp off, she never spent more than a day angry with them.
Dorni, Alphons and Fren thought she was odd for a girl. As for Ezril, he thought they were all odd children. Then again, he didn’t know a lot of people who lived in the city’s underbelly and got into fights that broke their noses at the young age of eight. Where he lived, children made sure to wait until they were fifteen and receiving some kind of weapons training from the gate keepers before they got into any serious fight.
That said, he doubted he would’ve really spent much time with them if he’d never met Lenaria on that fateful night years ago. And he knew he wouldn’t have remained their friend after Lenaria had gone if that fateful night hadn’t left most of the kids he knew giving him odd looks and quiet mumbles. There was a standing mystery in the city surrounded by the deaths of four men and fire that burned black as night. Ezril and Lenaria stood at the heart of this mystery. While Ezril had explained what had happened to the head gate keeper already, he knew there were still many who didn’t believe his story.
So while the adults were too nice and favored his aunt Teneri too much to turn away from Ezril, the kids had no such discipline. On the bright side, it kept them from being mean to him. On the dark side, being feared and wary of was a good way to be made a pariah. He knew there were rumors about him. What he still didn’t know till this day was what they were.
Ezril, as aunt Teneri had always advised, tried not to let it get to him. But he’d be lying if he said it didn’t. At least in the underbelly Alphons, Dorni and Fren didn’t fear him. They didn’t whisper and watch him in half-hidden fear.
The sun was dipping into the horizon now. It’s once yellow glow was now a deep orange. Evening had come a while back and everyone had ignored it, now night was drawing nigh. At ten years of age, Ezril could ignore the evening but not the night.
It was confusing enough that aunt Teneri always allowed him spend so much time outside the house. His mates had no such freedom as the one he had. At least not the ones in the main city. Out here in the underbelly, the children had more freedom than him. Unlike his, however, their freedom came with no one to protect them.
Ezril got up from the sandy ground and dusted the shorts he wore. His hands came away sandy. While he was satisfied with his brief clean up, he knew his shorts were anything but clean.
“You sure you’s can’t stay a little longer?” Alphons asked him. “Senam says the king’s guards will be passing by midnight. We’s plannin’ on headin’ to the gate to have a look see. If you stay out long enough, you might get to sees them with us.”
The boy’s alduin was terrible but Ezril held nothing of it against him. He never had and never would. Most of the children of the Underbelly were self-taught, after all. To expect perfection from them in literacy was to expect a Tainted to stop using magic: it was possible but unreasonable.
Alphons’ news was tempting. Here in their city, located on the edge of the Alduin kingdom, no one ever got to see the king’s guards. They were the only soldiers in the kingdom rumored to be capable of matching priests of Truth in equal deadliness.
The priests fought in the name of Truth. They often worked under the guidance of the Priestesses and sisters who governed the church of Truth. They sought out their own agenda, usually, giving aid to the kingdom when it was in need, often times refusing without punishment. Mostly, they only marched in numbers for wars they deemed as crusades. They moved when the problems were a threat to the Credo. The king’s guards, however, answered only to the king, and he sent them where problems were believed to be direst.
The priests of Truth fought the Tainted and their magic in protection of the Credo while the king’s guards fought them in protection of the kingdom.
If they were passing this far out at the edge of the kingdom, then perhaps the rumors of war to the north were true.
Ezril didn’t like the feeling it gave him.
Dorni and the others were children who lived their lives as best they could by their own rules. They didn’t spend much time amongst a lot of the adults so they rarely heard of the worries whispered in full families and by parents who believed they had a lot to lose. But Ezril did, and he understood enough to know that if the rumors of war were true, it wouldn’t go well for the city. The soldiers would make a fort of this place and it would be reduced to a battle ground.
Ezril shook his head at the thought of war and it sufficed to sour whatever little excitement he’d gotten from the idea of seeing the king’s guards.
“You know what,” he said, making up his mind. “Maybe I’ll see them another time.”
“Scaredy cat,” Alphons snorted.
“I’m not scared,” Ezril said, unfazed by the boy’s goading. “I’m obedient. There’s a difference. I have to be home before dark.”
He cast his gaze in the direction of the setting sun and worried he wouldn’t make it back home on time. By the time he got home, it would be nightfall.
Aunt Teneri won’t be happy.
Ezril turned away from his friends. He waved them a simple goodbye and made his way back to the more reputable part of the city. Back to the people he found boring but clean.
“Bring back a spare shirt for me!” Fren called after him as he left.
Ezril nodded in response as he ran, wondering if he still had any clothes that would fit the small boy. He’d already given the boy all the clothes he owned and had outgrown. Sometimes he wondered what exactly the boy did with them, because every time they all met Fren never had a shirt on and his pants were always in a horrible state.
Ezril bounded through the alleys. He slipped his way between buildings and crept out into the open city of clean roads and clean houses. It was already night and dark by the time he arrived at the heart of Green Horn.
The roads here were made of cobble stones where the underbelly had only sand and dust. While the roads were growing steadily empty at this time when everyone had made their way home, it was usually busy with people and horses. During the day it was as loud as a busy city could get and just as active.
Ezril took a turn down Silver Lane. He followed down the sidewalk with hurried steps. His eyes darting about in the darkness. He had returned to the city but he still wasn’t too far off from the underbelly, so safety wasn’t entirely guaranteed. Halfway down Silver Lane, he crossed the empty roads, made his way to the other side and slipped through another alley, a small gap between two buildings.
Aunt Teneri would be worried by his tardiness, and he wasn’t a fan of making her worry so he hurried his steps. In her old age aunt Teneri had made a case of him returning home early today. She told him something about an important guest he was supposed to meet and here he was, coming at nightfall. As an only child she cared for him. She was kind but not overly so. She made physical contact only when necessary. She wasn’t one to tuck him in bed or give him a kiss on the head. But she was kind and made sure he never lacked anything. Sometimes, on rare occasions such as when he cried, she would make an exception and hold him. She would make calming sounds and give gentle promises until he had no more tears to shed.
As an orphan who knew nothing of his mother and carried the only memory of his father in the form of a red, right hand, aunt Teneri was the oldest family he knew. Sadly, she wasn’t related to him biologically. He knew this as he knew he was ten. How? Because she’d told him.
Most people in the city claimed she’d come in with him when he was barely five, holding his hand as they walked past the city gates. Where they came from was a mystery to everyone as well as Ezril. What had led them here was equally so.
As a form of respect to aunt Teneri for all the care she had given him, Ezril did his best to never ask of his parents. He’d asked on a few occasions growing up, though. Who was his father? What happened to his mother? How did she come to be the one caring for him? Why did she never want him to call her mother?
The last question was born more from confusion than true curiosity. Aunt Teneri had taken care of him all his life. Ezril had no memory where she was not present. In each one, she could be found playing a motherly role, always with an easy smile or a loving scowl. To him, she was a mother in all but name, and she seemed to take it quite literally.
Ezril’s mind wandered to other subjects as he drew closer to his home. The silence of the dark night was a welcome companion to his thoughts. He passed the resident church of Truth, the only one the small city had. As much as he believed in Truth, he couldn’t say he was a devout believer. For him, Truth was like his biological mother, a concept that simply existed. He’d never known his mother, had no memories of her, even, but everyone told him he’d had one. He could no sooner stop himself from believing he had a mother once than he could stop himself from believing Truth was real. This was the work of society; to mold a child into a being of their choice, to ingrain certain concepts until to doubt such a concept was anathema even to the child’s mind.
Truth was real to Ezril because everyone claimed he was real. It was no more than that, and no less.
Ezril wondered at the concept of the king’s guards as he passed the church. They would definitely be a sight to behold. Eln had worked alongside them once during his mercenary days and he always spoke of them with awe and respect. Their armors of leather and fine clothing were a crimson red that put blood to shame. Their insignia of crossed swords through a skull’s eyes was meant to be terrifying and strong.
Each man and woman of the king’s guard was blessed by Truth, given the strength of a Hallowed body the king went the extra mile to hone greatly. They were—according to rumors—the only people in the kingdom besides priests equipped well enough to stand against the scourge of the Tainted.
They would truly be a sight to behold. However, they were not so grand that Ezril would stay so late and give aunt Teneri a head ache over. A priest of Truth, however, was different. Or even Aemond, the kingdom’s hero. Those were sights people went an entire lifetime without seeing. Aemond was even a rarer sight than priests. Rumors had it the king sent him out to protect the kingdom from the threat of nin beasts too strong and dangerous for even platoons of soldiers, or to hunt down the Tainted and the Scorned who’d lived for too long and had grown too powerful.
But despite Aemond’s fame, Ezril found that he was more interested in priests.
The sisters of the church were often called the right hands of Truth. He showed benevolence with them, the love of a father and the compassion of a mother. With priests, however, he held wrath in his left hand. They were the weapons with which he smote the heretic and severed the Scorned and Tainted from their magic and their lives.
A sister of the church was respected. For a priest of Truth, respect was a lie hidden in the veil of half-bows and downturned eyes. No. For priests there was no respect, only fear. And reasonably so.
So when Ezril made his last turn and jogged his way up the last path that led to his home, he was considerably justified when he froze at the sight of the man standing in front of his home. The man had hair so grey it was almost white and he stood watching Ezril with expressionless eyes.
Ezril bowed his head on no more guidance than instinct. His legs froze beneath him and carried him no further.
After all, what was a child to do when faced with a man of the frock? What was a child to do when a priest of Truth stood between them and their home?